Pligget
Little to say for myself


Wednesday, March 26, 2003  

Absent Friend

It would have been my Dad's 81st birthday and 51st wedding anniversary today, had he not died 40 months ago.

I'm sitting here treasuring the memory of the last minutes I spent alone with him - the day before the operation from which he never regained consciousness. He was as gentle, considerate and shy with me that day as he always was with everyone he met, and I clutch that image of him to my heart. As my own life tumbles on, putting more distance between that day and this, I gain an ever stronger impression of just how much he loved us all.

I'm really pleased that my Mum, who was in love with him from the age of 16, and who so cherishes his memory, can endure the pain of his loss and still have an eye on her future life. As I write this she's probably making a few enhancements to the scale model she's made of her self-designed dream bungalow (complete with removable roof and lift-out attic rooms), and looking forward to her next chance to see her four dear friends from her Cambridge days.

I salute you Mum and send you my love, as I'm sure do your other three sons, your 10 grandchildren, your sister and your many nephews, neices, cousins and friends around the globe.

posted by Plig | 10:12 |


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Forget the sentimental notion that foreign policy is a struggle between virtue and vice, with virtue bound to win.
Forget the utopian notion that a brave new world without power politics will follow the unconditional surrender of wicked nations.
Forget the crusading notion that any nation, however virtuous and powerful, can have the mission to make the world in its own image.
Remember that diplomacy without power is feeble, and power without diplomacy is destructive and blind.
Remember that no nation's power is without limits, and hence that its policies must respect the power and interests of others.
Hans Morgenthau

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts
Bertrand Russell

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one
Albert Einstein

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative
Martin Luther King Jr.

Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man
Bertrand Russell

I think it would be a good idea
Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization

There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun
Pablo Picasso

Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others
Groucho Marx

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it
Mahatma Gandhi

Always make new mistakes
Esther Dyson
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